A father of five who has lived in Britain since he was a toddler and has spent almost 20 years serving an abolished indefinite jail term for stealing £20 is being deported to Jamaica – despite only having visited the country once in his adult life.
Sheldon Coore, 47, says Huddersfield is all he has ever known since his mother brought him to the UK – at just 16 months old – to join his grandparents, who settled during the Windrush era.
He was handed an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) jail term in 2005 after he put a man in a headlock and stole £20 from his pocket, having already racked up a string of previous convictions when he turned to crime in order to fund his drug addiction.
Despite originally being handed a minimum tariff of two years and 65 days, Coore is still languishing in prison two decades later, and says the open-ended jail term has “ruined his life”.
He is now waiting to be deported to Jamaica from HMP Erlestoke, a category C prison in Wiltshire, after the Home Office successfully applied to remove him despite his having visited the Caribbean country only once in his adult life.
“Every day I wake up, I feel like I am being punished twice and thrice and even tenfold, despite the IPP sentences being acknowledged to be a mistake,” he told The Independent.
The open-ended sentences were scrapped in 2012 following a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, but they were not abolished retrospectively, which meant almost 2,500 people already sentenced were left trapped without a release date.
Successive governments have rejected recommendations to resentence the remaining prisoners, despite at least 94 inmates having taken their own lives as they lost hope of ever being released.
Victims of the scandal whose tragic cases have been highlighted by The Independent include Leroy Douglas, who has served almost 20 years for stealing a mobile phone; Thomas White, 42, who set himself alight in his cell while serving 13 years for stealing a phone; and Abdullahi Suleman, 41, who is still inside 19 years after he was jailed for a laptop robbery.
The UN is currently investigating whether Britain is breaching human rights law in respect of five IPP prisoners whose cases were lodged in a complaint to the UN’s working group for arbitrary detention.
Coore served 10 years before he was released in 2015, but was recalled indefinitely around 18 months later over allegations in respect of which he was never charged.
He was further convicted of affray and sentenced to 15 months after he ran out with a knife when police came to arrest him, but he insists he only had the weapon to take his own life. He has been in prison ever since.
“I am not perfect, but I do not deserve my current situation,” said Coore, who was also sentenced to 16 weeks in 2017 for assaulting a prison officer. “I came to prison aged 26 for £20. I will be 47 next month. How can anybody justify keeping someone in prison for so long for £20?”
He now fears he could be put on a plane to Jamaica any day, after the Home Office launched action to deport him because he is classed as a foreign criminal.
His latest appeal to remain in Britain, where his five daughters were born, was dismissed by a judge at an immigration tribunal hearing last August.
Coore argued that deporting him would breach his human rights, but the judge ruled that – although he remains in close contact with his family – he has achieved “no realistic or effective integration” into British society because he has been in prison for so long.
Coore, who says he has always considered himself British, added: “I came to this country as a 16-month-old baby, and I’ve only been back once, on a two-week holiday 26 years ago.
“This would ruin me to go back to Jamaica, as it is an ‘alien’ world to me. All I have ever known is Huddersfield in the UK as my home. I would rather take my own life before I go onto a plane to Jamaica.”
Being deported would mean leaving behind his five daughters – a nine-year-old, twins aged 10, and two in their twenties. He also has a granddaughter, aged four, and another on the way.
His eldest daughter, Karrera Coore, 27, fears he won’t cope in Jamaica without his family support system. “He doesn’t know anyone in Jamaica,” she told The Independent. “He would have nowhere to go – he would be at risk.”
Coore’s mother, Dorrett Miller-Douglas, 62, said the government are holding her child’s “life in their hands”. She said that she fears for his life if he is deported to a country where “he’s got nobody”, after years of watching him deteriorate in prison.
“He’s just waiting for his fate,” she added. “He’s got nothing to live for. Sheldon is my first child and my first love, and it’s heartbreaking.”
She called for him to be released in Britain and given the mental health support that he needs in the community.
Campaigners United Group for Reform of IPP said Coore’s case is an illustration of why the IPP sentence is widely considered to be the greatest stain on the UK’s justice system.
“To serve 20 years for a £20 theft is not justice; it is a life destroyed by a sentence that was abolished over a decade ago precisely because it was found to be unlawful and inhumane,” a spokesperson added.
“Sheldon has spent two decades trapped in a cycle of psychological torture, only to now face ‘double punishment’ through deportation to a country where he has no roots and no support system. It is a cruel and illogical conclusion to an already shameful story.
“The government cannot continue to ignore the human cost of the IPP legacy. We are calling for an urgent review of all IPP cases to ensure that proportionality – the very foundation of our legal system – is finally restored.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “This government will not allow foreign criminals and illegal immigrants to exploit our laws, which is why we are reforming human rights laws and replacing the broken appeals system, allowing us to scale up deportations.
“All foreign national offenders who receive a prison sentence in the UK are referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity.”
#IPP #scandal #Ive #spent #years #prison #robbing #deport #country #Ive #called #home
